Arátoff returned to the Milovídoffs' house that same day, and conversed
for three whole hours with Anna Semyónovna. Madame Milovídoff went to
bed immediately after dinner--at two o'clock--and "rested" until evening
tea, at seven o'clock. Arátoff's conversation with Clara's sister was
not, properly speaking, a conversation: she did almost the whole of the
talking, at first with hesitation, with confusion, but afterward with
uncontrollable fervour. She had, evidently, idolised her sister. The
confidence wherewith Arátoff had inspired her waxed and strengthened;
she was no longer embarrassed; she even fell to weeping softly, twice,
in his presence. He seemed to her worthy of her frank revelations and
effusions. Nothing of that sort had ever before come into her own dull
life!... And he ... he drank in her every word.
This, then, is what he learned ... much of it, as a matter of course,
from what she refrained from saying ... and much he filled out for
himself.
In her youth Clara had been, without doubt, a disagreeable child; and as
a young girl she had been only a little softer: self-willed,
hot-tempered, vain, she had not got on particularly well with her
father, whom she despised for his drunkenness and incapacity. He was
conscious of this and did not pardon it in her. Her musical faculties
showed themselves at an early age; her father repressed them,
recognising painting as the sole art,--wherein he himself had had so
little success, but which had nourished him and his family. Clara had
loved her mother ... in a careless way, as she would have loved a nurse;
she worshipped her sister, although she squabbled with her, and bit
her.... It is true that afterward she had been wont to go down on her
knees before her and kiss the bitten places. She was all fire, all
passion, and all contradiction: vengeful and kind-hearted, magnanimous
and rancorous; "she believed in Fate, and did not believe in God" (these
words Anna whispered with terror); she loved everything that was
beautiful, and dressed herself at haphazard; she could not endure to
have young men pay court to her, but in books she read only those pages
where love was the theme; she did not care to please, she did not like
petting and never forgot caresses as she never forgot offences; she was
afraid of death, and she had killed herself! She had been wont to say
sometimes, "I do not meet the sort of man I want--and the others I will
not have!"--"Well, and what if you should meet the right sort?" Anna had
asked her.--"If I do ... I shall take him."--"But what if he will not
give himself?"--"Well, then ... I will make an end of myself. It will
mean that I am good for nothing."
Clara's father ... (he sometimes asked his wife when he was drunk: "Who
was the father of that black-visaged little devil of thine?--I was
not!")--Clara's father, in the endeavour to get her off his hands as
promptly as possible, undertook to betroth her to a wealthy young
merchant, a very stupid fellow,--one of the "cultured" sort. Two weeks
before the wedding (she was only sixteen years of age), she walked up to
her betrothed, folded her arms, and drumming with her fingers on her
elbows (her favourite pose), she suddenly dealt him a blow, bang! on his
rosy cheek with her big, strong hand! He sprang to his feet, and merely
gasped,--it must be stated that he was dead in love with her.... He
asked: "What is that for?" She laughed and left the room.--"I was
present in the room," narrated Anna, "and was a witness. I ran after her
and said to her: 'Good gracious, Kátya, why didst thou do that?'--But
she answered me: 'If he were a real man he would have thrashed me, but
as it is, he is a wet hen!' And he asks what it is for, to boot. If he
loved me and did not avenge himself, then let him bear it and not ask:
'what is that for?' He'll never get anything of me, unto ages of ages!'
And so she did not marry him. Soon afterward she made the acquaintance
of that actress, and left our house. My mother wept, but my father only
said: 'Away with the refractory goat from the flock!' and would take no
trouble, or try to hunt her up. Father did not understand Clara. On the
eve of her flight," added Anna, "she almost strangled me in her embrace,
and kept repeating: 'I cannot! I cannot do otherwise!... My heart may
break in two, but I cannot! our cage is too small ... it is not large
enough for my wings! And one cannot escape his fate'"....
"After that," remarked Anna, "we rarely saw each other.... When father
died she came to us for a couple of days, took nothing from the
inheritance, and again disappeared. She found it oppressive with us....
I saw that. Then she returned to Kazán as an actress."
Arátoff began to interrogate Anna concerning the theatre, the parts in
which Clara had appeared, her success.... Anna answered in detail, but
with the same sad, although animated enthusiasm. She even showed Arátoff
a photographic portrait, which represented Clara in the costume of one
of her parts. In the portrait she was looking to one side, as though
turning away from the spectators; the ribbon intertwined with her thick
hair fell like a serpent on her bare arm. Arátoff gazed long at that
portrait, thought it a good likeness, inquired whether Clara had not
taken part in public readings, and learned that she had not; that she
required the excitement of the theatre, of the stage ... but another
question was burning on his lips.
"Anna Semyónovna!" he exclaimed at last, not loudly, but with peculiar
force, "tell me, I entreat you, why she ... why she made up her mind to
that frightful step?"
Anna dropped her eyes.--"I do not know!" she said, after the lapse of
several minutes.--"God is my witness, I do not know!" she continued
impetuously, perceiving that Arátoff had flung his hands apart as though
he did not believe her.... "From the very time she arrived here she
seemed to be thoughtful, gloomy. Something must infallibly have happened
to her in Moscow, which I was not able to divine! But, on the contrary,
on that fatal day, she seemed ... if not more cheerful, at any rate more
tranquil than usual. I did not even have any forebodings," added Anna
with a bitter smile, as though reproaching herself for that.
"You see," she began again, "it seemed to have been written in Kátya's
fate, that she should be unhappy. She was convinced of it herself from
her early youth. She would prop her head on her hand, meditate, and say:
'I shall not live long!' She had forebodings. Just imagine, she even saw
beforehand,--sometimes in a dream, sometimes in ordinary wise,--what was
going to happen to her! 'I cannot live as I wish, so I will not live at
all,' ... was her adage.--'Our life is in our own hands, you know!' And
she proved it."
Anna covered her face with her hands and ceased speaking.
"Anna Semyónovna," began Arátoff, after waiting a little: "perhaps you
have heard to what the newspapers attributed...."
"To unhappy love?" interrupted Anna, removing her hands from her face
with a jerk. "That is a calumny, a calumny, a lie!... My unsullied,
unapproachable Kátya ... Kátya! ... and an unhappy, rejected love? And
would not I have known about that?... Everybody, everybody fell in love
with her ... but she.... And whom could she have fallen in love with
here? Who, out of all these men, was worthy of her? Who had attained to
that ideal of honour, uprightness, purity,--most of all, purity,--which
she constantly held before her, in spite of all her defects?... Reject
her ... her...."
Anna's voice broke.... Her fingers trembled slightly. Suddenly she
flushed scarlet all over ... flushed with indignation, and at that
moment--and only at that moment--did she resemble her sister.
Arátoff attempted to apologise.
"Listen," broke in Anna once more:--"I insist upon it that you shall not
believe that calumny yourself, and that you shall dissipate it, if
possible! Here, you wish to write an article about her, or something of
that sort:--here is an opportunity for you to defend her memory! That is
why I am talking so frankly with you. Listen: Kátya left a diary...."
Arátoff started.--"A diary," he whispered.
"Yes, a diary ... that is to say, a few pages only.--Kátya was not fond
of writing ... for whole months together she did not write at all ...
and her letters were so short! But she was always, always truthful, she
never lied.... Lie, forsooth, with her vanity! I ... I will show you
that diary! You shall see for yourself whether it contains a single hint
of any such unhappy love!"
Anna hastily drew from the table-drawer a thin copy-book, about ten
pages in length, no more, and offered it to Arátoff. The latter grasped
it eagerly, recognised the irregular, bold handwriting,--the handwriting
of that anonymous letter,--opened it at random, and began at the
following lines:
"Moscow--Tuesday ... June. I sang and recited at a literary
morning. To-day is a significant day for me. _It must decide my
fate_." (These words were doubly underlined.) "Once more I have
seen...." Here followed several lines which had been carefully
blotted out.--And then: "No! no! no!... I must return to my former
idea, if only...."
Arátoff dropped the hand in which he held the book, and his head sank
quietly on his breast.
"Read!" cried Anna.--"Why don't you read? Read from the beginning....
You can read the whole of it in five minutes, though this diary extends
over two whole years. In Kazán she wrote nothing...."
Arátoff slowly rose from his chair, and fairly crashed down on his knees
before Anna!
She was simply petrified with amazement and terror.
"Give ... give me this diary," said Arátoff in a fainting voice.--"Give
it to me ... and the photograph ... you must certainly have another--but
I will return the diary to you.... But I must, I must...."
In his entreaty, in the distorted features of his face there was
something so despairing that it even resembled wrath, suffering.... And
in reality he was suffering. It seemed as though he had not been able to
foresee that such a calamity would descend upon him, and was excitedly
begging to be spared, to be saved....
"Give it to me," he repeated.
"But ... you ... you were not in love with my sister?" said Anna at
last.
Arátoff continued to kneel.
"I saw her twice in all ... believe me!... and if I had not been
impelled by causes which I myself cannot clearly either understand or
explain ... if some power that is stronger than I were not upon me.... I
would not have asked you.... I would not have come hither.... I must ...
I ought ... why, you said yourself that I was bound to restore her
image!"
"And you were not in love with my sister?" asked Anna for the second
time.
Arátoff did not reply at once, and turned away slightly, as though with
pain.
"Well, yes! I was! I was!--And I am in love with her now...." he
exclaimed with the same desperation as before.
Footsteps became audible in the adjoining room.
"Rise ... rise ..." said Anna hastily. "My mother is coming."
Arátoff rose.
"And take the diary and the picture. God be with you!--Poor, poor
Kátya!... But you must return the diary to me," she added with
animation.--"And if you write anything, you must be sure to send it to
me.... Do you hear?"
The appearance of Madame Milovídoff released Arátoff from the necessity
of replying.--He succeeded, nevertheless, in whispering:--"You are an
angel! Thanks! I will send all that I write...."
Madame Milovídoff was too drowsy to divine anything. And so Arátoff left
Kazán with the photographic portrait in the side-pocket of his coat. He
had returned the copy-book to Anna, but without her having detected it,
he had cut out the page on which stood the underlined words.
On his way back to Moscow he was again seized with a sort of stupor.
Although he secretly rejoiced that he had got what he went for, yet he
repelled all thoughts of Clara until he should reach home again. He
meditated a great deal more about her sister Anna.--"Here now," he said
to himself, "is a wonderful, sympathetic being! What a delicate
comprehension of everything, what a loving heart, what absence of
egoism! And how comes it that such girls bloom with us, and in the
provinces,--and in such surroundings into the bargain! She is both
sickly, and ill-favoured, and not young,--but what a capital wife she
would make for an honest, well-educated man! That is the person with
whom one ought to fall in love!..." Arátoff meditated thus ... but on
his arrival in Moscow the matter took quite another turn.